436 
THE BUBAL NEW-YORKER 
FEB. 26 
THE 
Rural New-Yorker } 
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY. 
Conducted by 
ELBERT 6. CARMAN. 
Address 
THE RURAL NEW-YORKER, 
No. 34 Park Row, New Votes. 
SATURDAY. FEB 26, 1881. 
We can still supply Posters, Seed and 
Plant Supplements, Agents’ Outfits, Spec¬ 
imen Copies 'without charge to all who 
apply. 
We cannot supply back numbers. 
The Seed Distribution has been de¬ 
layed, owing to the fact that the Giant 
Bed Dutch Asparagus seeds have only 
just been received. We shall now be 
able to send our subscribers the full dis¬ 
tribution precisely as originally an¬ 
nounced. 
M. P. Wilder says in Green's Pruit 
Grower that if he could have but one of 
his 800 varieties of pears, it would be the 
Beut-rd d’ Aujou. Col. Wilder has in 
effect told us the same thing. 
- - ■ 
Prof. S. W. Johnson, whose opinions 
are entitled to much respect, tells us that 
some of the partisans of ensilage say 
that, dricd corn-fodder is greatly inferior 
to a corresponding quantity of the same 
put dowu as ensilage. In the total ab¬ 
sence of any exact comparative trials, 
these claims, he says, must be regarded 
as entirely questionable. 
Our next will be the Small Fruit 
Special. Wo are in hopes it may please 
as well as the late Special devoted to 
Hardy Shrubs and Trees. The American 
Nows Company were sold out of their 
usual supply the first day, and we could 
have sold 1,500 copies in the Rural office. 
Unfortunately no extra copies were print¬ 
ed. It is gratifying to know that so lively 
an interest is taken in hardy plants. 
In conversation with Mr. Parsons re¬ 
specting our recent notes upon magnolias 
we find that his experiene.- as between 
Soulange’s and Lenny’s Magnolias is t at 
the former is the hardier of the two. Our 
own plants grow within a few yards of 
each other, and wit hout exception Lennys 
has stood the Winters better than Sou- 
lauge’s. Wo may say also that it blooms 
more freely during the Bummer and Fall. 
But while our experience as to these 
magnolias is confined to two plants, Mr. 
Parsons has had the opportunity of ob¬ 
serving thousands, and his words should 
therefore guide our readers. 
-« - ♦ ■» »- 
Sutton’s Magnum Bonum Potato.— 
As our readers are aware, this is a new 
English seedling which has been exten¬ 
sively advertised and, so far as we learn, 
given very general satisfaction in Eng¬ 
land. It is now offered in this oountry, 
and the few tests that have been made 
show that, contrary to the rule with Eng¬ 
lish seedling potatoes, it promises to be 
of some value here as well. The quality 
of the Magnum Bonum is very good, as 
we judge from having cooked and eaten a 
trial quantity of seed sent to us by a 
friend. The Early Rose, and in fact all 
potatoes of that class, though flaky with¬ 
out, become waxy within, and this sog¬ 
giness increases as the potatoes grow old. 
The Magnum Bonum, though the outside 
does not crumble or flake off when boiled, 
is still mealy within and possessed of a 
richness quite peculiar to itself. We have 
on the one hand the “ strong-flavored ” 
potatoes ; on the other the tasteless kinds, 
well represented by the Alpha, the Early 
and Late Rose Snowflake, Early Ohio, 
etc. We may speak of these as mealy, 
pure, fine-grained, of excellent quality, 
etc., but rtally their excellence, after all, 
depends upon their mealiness ; for they 
are so nearly destitute of flavor that no¬ 
body could determine one from another 
when cooked. The Magnum Bonum is 
to us a relief from such tasteless varie¬ 
ties, while its peculiarly rich flavor is not 
that which can be classed as “ strong.” 
— — - 
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF 
Tbs Chicago Tribune 6sy 5 j—"A corner iu 
the provision market is m progress, which 
dwarfs any previous manipulation, even the 
great one of last year. Witbia a week there 
have heeu purchased 25,000,000 pounds ot 
short ribs. 24 000 barrels of pork and 10.000 
tierces of lard The parties interested are 
mainly the ones who ran the successful deal a 
year Bgo. and it is their intention to put prices 
far above present rates.” 
How does this differ in reality from a 
news item of, say, 500 years ago, to the 
effect that a coalition of robber-barons 
had been formed to lay the people of 
some fertile valley under contribution ? 
In thoBe old times the people banded to¬ 
gether to resist, such raids, and many a 
bold rider was brought to the ground 
with pikes made of scythes fastened to 
poles in the hands of the abused peasant¬ 
ry. Now, however, any attempt at self- 
protection against, these raids of the rob¬ 
ber barons of the corn exchange, or the 
produce exchange, is denounced as “com¬ 
munism,” and as an attack upon the lib¬ 
erty (!) of trade. Every honest producer 
and every honest consumer suffers, and 
the profit that should have been divided 
between them goes into the pockets of 
men who have no higher moral footing 
than burglars, highwaymen, or train 
wreckers. 
•-- 
CONCENTRATED MANURES. A QUESTION 
NOT ANSWERED. 
“Do you advise me to use chemical 
fertilizers on my farm ? If so, what 
kinds?" 
We receive this question very often 
and we regret that no direct answer can 
be given. Upon some laud bone gives 
immediate and profitable results. On 
other land it seems to have no effect what¬ 
ever. The same may be said of potash, 
nitrogenous fertilizers, lime, salt, plaster, 
etc. The only advice we can give to our 
farmers is to try each kind on separate 
plots, and combinations of the several 
kinds on other plots. In this way some 
indication may be obtained as to whether 
special or combined fertilizers are needed. 
Land may be infertile because it needs 
one or all of the elements of plant food. 
When, therefore, phosphoric acid fails 
to produce appreciable results this is not 
positive proof that the land does not need 
bone. If potash should fail, this is not 
positive proof that, potash is not needed. 
The laud may be exhausted of both pot¬ 
ash and phosphoric acid, in which case, 
though either may fail when used separ¬ 
ately, the use of both may be attended 
with entire success. Farm yard manure, 
if plentifully used, never fails because 
it supplies all the food that plants need, 
but not iu the relative quantities which 
they need. An accumulation, therefore, 
of certain food constituents and the in¬ 
sufficiency of others may result from its 
long-continued use, which inequality may 
be remedied by the use of special con¬ 
centrated fertilizers if we did but know 
what constituent was most needed. In 
this case, the test of each separately 
should be best calculated to answer the 
question. It has happened in the experi¬ 
ence of almost every farmer that certain 
strips, or pieces, of land sowed to oats, 
wheat or rye, that have received special 
manures, accidentally as it were, without 
any special object in view, have pro¬ 
duced crops far ahead of any other parts 
of the field. Here we have a trustworthy 
hint as to what the land rnoBt needs, and 
our suggestion as to test-plots is pre¬ 
cisely of the same character. Commercial 
fertilizer establishments furnish special 
manures, such as potash, nitrogen, phos¬ 
phoric acid—or “complete” manures, 
which are supposed to supply all of the 
food which a given crop needs. That is, 
they approximate the composition of farm 
manures, only that they supply the food 
more nearly in the proportionate quanti¬ 
ties which, according to analyses, such 
plants require. Whether, supplied in this 
way, they are as assimilable, or whether, 
so to speak, plants fatten upon them as 
readily as when their food is placed be¬ 
fore them in the form of farm manures, 
we cannot say. All should remember 
that we are still in our infancy as regards 
the use and value of concentrated fertil¬ 
izers, and whether in any given case they 
may be profitably used or not is, with 
our present information, a problem that 
every farmer must solve for himself. 
FARMERS AND MERCHANTS- 
At the time of the “ Grange Move¬ 
ment,” some eight years ago, the com¬ 
mercial class was disposed to regard the 
action of the farmers as antagonistic to 
themselves, and to side with the transpor¬ 
tation interest. This was no doubt due 
to the protest against an excess of “mid¬ 
dlemen,” which was made by the farm¬ 
ers. But even the commercial journals 
now speak of the elimination of all un¬ 
necessary intermediaries as essential to 
successful commerce. The fact is that 
the interests of all the industrial classes, 
the commercial not less than the mechan¬ 
ical aud agricultural, are substantially 
the same. The protest by the latter 
against supernumerary middlemen was 
simply a phase of the’demand for labor- 
saving machinery, aud the simplification 
of all industrial processes and methods. 
It is just as necessary to the progress of 
America, that all extra middlemen should 
be thrown out, as it is that the extra 
bands iu the factory and on the farm 
should be eliminated by improved ma¬ 
chinery and implements. The merchants, 
as a body, now recognize this truth. 
But they go further than that. They 
have taken up the action against exces¬ 
sive rates aud favoritism on the part of 
transportation corporations where the 
farmers dropped it (if they may be said 
to have dropped it at all), and are’ pushing 
it with the enterprise and vigor which 
their greater command of capital and 
better opportunities of effective co-opera¬ 
tion give them. And they also meet the 
proofs of their coming snocess in the 
puerile epithet of “communist” which 
they threw at the farmer, and which the 
railroad men now throw at them. 
The same homogeneity of interest 
which is now admitted to exist between 
the commercial and the producing classes 
will eventually (and before long, we trust) 
be seen to exist between them and the 
transportation interest. It is not for the 
advantage of any business man or corpo¬ 
ration, iu the long tud, to cheat, abuse, or 
iu any way wronghis or its customers. It is 
only because so many railway corpora¬ 
tions are now under the management, of 
ignorant., incompetent and short-sighted 
men that the public complaint is so loud 
against them. Those men, like incompe¬ 
tent shipmasters, will soon demonstrate 
the folly of their methods, and be suc¬ 
ceeded by those who will have sense to 
see that justice and honesty are the best 
and only policy for them ; that any at¬ 
tempt on the part of institutions like 
theirs, so hopelessly in the grip of the 
people, aud so subject to the resistless 
sweep of popular authority, can only be 
made profitable, iu the long ran, by treat¬ 
ing all with whom they have to deal with 
the strictest equity. If this demand for 
equity, whether on the part of farmers or 
other business classes, is “ communism," 
then communism is destined to be the 
Jaw of the laud, for equity the people 
will have. 
SAVING AND SPENDING. 
The accumulated wealth of a nation is 
the sum of its savings. This may be iu 
the shape of money, lands, cattle or any 
property which costs money or labor, or 
which is the direct increase of such prop¬ 
erty. If a person saves out of his income 
a hundred dollars and keeps it in any 
form of permanent property, it remains 
as wealth, and may be used to increase 
itself. But the moment the hundred dol¬ 
lars is expended in destructible property, 
that is* such as may wear out or does not 
reproduce itself, it begins to vanish and 
finally disappears. For instance, if the 
hundred dollars be spent for costly 
clothes, a carriage or a driving horse, a 
hunting dog or a cask of wine, it is evi¬ 
dent that it immediately begins to wear 
away, to depreciate in value, or to be 
used up; and it is only a question of 
time how long, or soon, before it will come 
to an end. But if a oow, a workhorse, 
or a piece of laud is purchased, or the 
money or its representative is spent to 
reclaim a marsh ; to drain useless land ; 
or to erect a building; it at once becomes 
reproductive, remains intact, and earns 
interest for its use, or it wastes but slow¬ 
ly, aud iu the wasting or wearing of it, 
it not only replaces itself, perhaps many 
times, but gives continual profit for its 
ub6. So far as money or labor is used 
for the latter class of purposes, it is not 
spent, but is saved. It is also saved and 
remains or reappears as wealth, when it 
is used for any neoessary purpose, as the 
production or purchase of food aud cloth¬ 
ing, suitable for its owner’s business; or 
for tools, or anything which will enable 
him to work to replace it. It is spent and 
disappears as property or wealth, when 
it is used for purposes of luxury or waste 
of any kind, giving no valuable return 
for its use, notwithstanding it may have 
been paid out as wages for laborers or 
artisans. 
A million dollars have been squandered 
and have disappeared in villainous Bmoke 
end deafening noise in celebration of the 
Fourth of July. That money, so far as 
it represents labor, has gone out of ex¬ 
istence, and is totally wasted, The money 
itself remains, it has gone to China per¬ 
haps, to pay for a year’s labor of many 
men who have been making fireworks, 
and these have spent it for food and 
clothes, while they have been at work ; 
but they have nothing to show for their 
labor; ’what has come in has gone out; 
aud so Avith those who earned the money 
with which the fireworks were purchased, 
and all and every person engaged in the 
business of making and procuring them. 
This is a typical case and there are many 
others of which this is a type. A person, 
family, or nation, is wealthy or poor ns 
ifc saves or spends ; and if we will only 
look into the secret causes of many cases 
of poverty which are just now causes of 
complaint, we should find there has been 
too much spending; and on the contrary, 
those cases in which a person or family 
btauds in better circumstances thaubefore, 
will be found to have resulted from a 
habit of savins?. Extravagance is with¬ 
out excuse. There is no true enjoyment 
in wasting anything, nor in squandering 
the proceeds of former work in idleness ; 
nor in working hard for a time, that an 
opportunity may be secured of going on a 
debauch. That is a cynical and a vicious, 
although old, adage’ “let us eat and 
drink for to-morrow we dieit is repeat¬ 
ed in fewer words in the modern, “a 
merry life aud a short one.” The true 
philosophy is to use our time and our 
opportunities that we may increase the 
true happiness of not only ourselves, but 
of those about us, and that we may leave 
the world when we have done witli it, 
better off than it was when we entered it, 
and inherited the fruits of the labor of 
others who had preceded us in the same 
virtuous efforts. Aud this can only be 
effected by industry aud a well regulated 
economy which is neither niggardliness 
nor wastefulness. 
-- 
BREVITIES. 
The next Rural will be the Special Small 
Fruit Number. 
The attention of our readers is called to our 
Report on the Golden Ovoid Mangels on page 
131. 
The Japan Persimmon. The Rural was 
sharply censored for giving its opinion that it 
would not prove hardy in the North. It is not 
always pleasant to be the first to condemn new 
and lauded plants, let the condemnation be 
ever so well merited. But there is a satisfac¬ 
tion about it in the long run. 
We have received several complaints from 
our subscribers that the ring sent ont with 
subscriptions to the Saturday Evening Post, of 
Philadelphia. Pa , and warranted t.o be gold, is 
not gold. One ring, which iB certainly not 
gold, haB been sent to us a& proof. We had 
supposed the establishment, in every way 
trustworthy, or we should have declined their 
advertisement. 
From present appearances, among the nu¬ 
merous sins of ouiis»ion which should briDg 
well merited rebuke on l he present Congress, 
will be its culpable failure to pass a bill for 
the suppression and restriction of pleuro¬ 
pneumonia among cattle. The urgency of this 
measure has been amply demonstrated in and 
out of Congress, but while day after day has 
been wasted by this body in futile wrangling 
over mere political questions of no practical 
interest to the people, this matter of vital 
importance to the greatest interest of the na¬ 
tion has been shamefully neglected. Last 
Friday, the passage of the Cattle Diseases Bill 
establishing a Bureau of Animal Industry, 
etc., was strongly urged iu the Senate by Mr. 
Johnson, of Virginia. Mr. Coke, of Texas, 
and others; but its provisions mot with bitter 
objections from Mr. Ingalls, on the ground 
that the bill was a conflicting. Incoherent 
medley and jnrnbla of provisions every one 
of which, iu bis judgment, was directly at 
war with the rights of the States. It is chiefly 
out of an excess of regard for State rights 
that the present Democratic Congress has 
hitherto fuiled to pass a satisfactory bill iu 
this connection, and as it has only another 
week to live, it is hardly likely that it will 
in its last moment* remedy the wrong it 
has hitherto neglected. Well, the farmers of 
the count/v will have litllo reason to regret 
the end of u Congress which has been so 
atrociously negligent of their welfare. 
A committee of prominent California grain 
merchants lately requested the managers of 
the Pacific railroads to state the lowest price 
at which they tvould transport not less than 
150 000 tons of wheat overlaud to New York 
City. As lately stated here, the rates of freight 
on the Pacific Coast for shipment of grain 
round Cape Horn arc so high as to leave no 
margin of profit to the producers, and even at 
such excessive rates the tonnage facilities are 
far too small to meet the demand. It was 
therefore thought that the railroads might be 
able to name a figure for overlaud trausporta- 
lion, which would at least enable the wheat 
growers to escupe a loss on the crops. The 
railroads, however, it is said, fixed the over¬ 
land freight on grain at 60 cents per bushel, or 
about $20 per long ton. As tiie market for 
California wheat is in Europe, the costof trans¬ 
porting it across the Atlantic would have to he 
added to the above charge, w'hich would 
raise the total freignt to a figure which 
would leave no profit to the producer. 
But in addition to the obstacle of cost, neith¬ 
er the Central nor Union Pacific Railroads 
could engage in such an immense traffic. Both 
roads are single tracks with switches at loug 
intervals—a circumstance productive ot much 
delay in the ordinary business of the roadB; 
but if each day from 10 to20 wheat trains were 
started eastward from California, confusion 
would be endless, unless both roads built 
double tracks along their entire Hues. Again, 
neither company possesses a tithe of the roll¬ 
ing stock which so enormous a grain business 
would demand, and it would not pay connect¬ 
ing roadB to send empty cars to California to 
coiuo buck lull. With inadequate tonnage 
even at exorbitant rates of treigbt, and no 
immediate possibility of finding a railraoad 
outlet to market for their crops, the plight of 
Calilornla wheat raisers Is notan enviable oue, 
however heavy may have been their harvest. 
